The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.

A little over two weeks ago I had the pleasure of speaking at SearchLove San Diego. My presentation, Does Google Still Need Links, looked at the available evidence on how and to what extent Google is using links as a ranking factor in 2017, including the piece of research that I’m sharing here today.

One of the main points of my presentation was to argue that while links still do represent a useful source of information for Google’s ranking algorithm, Google now has many other sources, most of which they would never have dreamed of back when PageRank was conceived as a proxy for the popularity and authority of websites nearly 20 years ago.

Branded search volume is one such source of information, and one of the sources that is most accessible for us mere mortals, so I decided to take a deeper look on how it compared with a link-based metric. It also gives us some interesting insight into the KPIs we should be pursuing in our off-site marketing efforts — because brand awareness and link building are often conflicting goals.

For clarity, by branded search volume, I mean the monthly regional search volume for the brand of a ranking site. For example, for the page https://www.walmart.com/cp/Gift-Cards/96894, this would be the US monthly search volume for the term “walmart” (as given by Google Keyword Planner). I’ve written more about how I put together this dataset and dealt with edge cases below.

When picking my link-based metric for comparison, Domain Authority seemed a natural choice — it’s domain-level, which ought to be fair given that generally that’s the level of precision with which we can measure branded search volume, and it came out top in Moz’s study of domain-level link-based factors.

A note on correlation studies

Before I go any further, here’s a word of warning on correlation studies, including this one: They can easily miss the forest for the trees.

For example, the fact that Domain Authority (or branded search volume, or anything else) is positively correlated with rankings could indicate that any or all of the following is likely:

Links cause sites to rank well

Ranking well causes sites to get links

Some third factor (e.g. reputation or age of site) causes sites to get both links and rankings

That’s not to say that correlation studies are useless — but we should use them to inform our understanding and prompt further investigation, not as the last word on what is and isn’t a ranking factor.

Methodology

The Moz study referenced above used the provided 800 sample keywords from all 22 top-level categories in Google Keyword Planner, then looked at the top 50 results for each of these. After de-duplication, this results in 16,521 queries. Moz looked at only web results (no images, answer boxes, etc.), ignored queries with fewer than 25 results in total, and, as far as I can tell, used desktop rankings.

I’ve taken a slightly different approach. I reached out to STAT to request a sample of ~5,000 non-branded keywords for the US market. Like Moz, I stripped out non-web results, but unlike Moz, I also stripped out anything with a baserank worse than 10 (baserank being STAT’s way of presenting the ranking of a search result when non-web results are excluded). You can see the STAT export here.

Moz used Mean Spearman correlations, which is a process that involves ranking variables for each keyword, then taking the average correlation across all keywords. I’ve also chosen this method, and I’ll explain why using the below example:

Keyword

SERP Ranking Position

Ranking Site

Branded Search Volume of Ranking Site

Per Keyword Rank of Branded Search Volume

Keyword A

1

example1.com

100,000

1

Keyword A

2

example2.com

10,000

2

Keyword A

3

example3.com

1,000

3

Keyword A

4

example4.com

100

4

Keyword A

5

example5.com

10

5

For Keyword A, we have wildly varying branded search volumes in the top 5 search results. This means that search volume and rankings could never be particularly well-correlated, even though the results are perfectly sorted in order of search volume.

Moz’s approach avoids this problem by comparing the ranking position (the 2nd column in the table) with the column on the far right of the table — how each site ranks for the given variable.

In this case, correlating ranking directly with search volume would yield a correlation of (-)0.75. Correlating with ranked search volume yields a perfect correlation of 1.

This process is then repeated for every keyword in the sample (I counted desktop and mobile versions of the same keyword as two keywords), then the average correlation is taken.

Defining branded search volume

Initially, I thought that pulling branded search volume for every site in the sample would be as simple as looking up the search volume for their domain minus its subdomain and TLD (e.g. “walmart” for https://www.walmart.com/cp/Gift-Cards/96894). However, this proved surprisingly deficient. Take these examples:

Are the brands for these sites “cruise,” “wordpress,” and “sd,” respectively? Clearly not. To figure out what the branded search term was, I started by taking each potential candidate from the URL, e.g., for ecotalker.wordpress.com:

Ecotalker

Ecotalker wordpress

Wordpress.com

Wordpress

I then worked out what the highest search volume term was for which the subdomain in question ranked first — which in this case is a tie between “Ecotalker” and “Ecotalker wordpress,” both of which show up as having zero volume.

I’m leaning fairly heavily on Google’s synonym matching in search volume lookup here to catch any edge-edge-cases — for example, I’m confident that “ecotalker.wordpress” would show up with the same search volume as “ecotalker wordpress.”

You can see the resulting dataset of subdomains with their DA and branded search volume here.

(Once again, I’ve used STAT to pull the search volumes in bulk.)

The results: Brand awareness > links

Here’s the main story: branded search volume is better correlated with rankings than Domain Authority is.

However, there’s a few other points of interest here. Firstly, neither of these variables has a particularly strong correlation with rankings — a perfect correlation would be 1, and I’m finding a correlation between Domain Authority and rankings of 0.071, and a correlation between branded search volume and rankings of 0.1. This is very low by the standards of the Moz study, which found a correlation of 0.26 between Domain Authority and rankings using the same statistical methods.

I think the biggest difference that accounts for this is Moz’s use of 50 web results per query, compared to my use of 10. If true, this would imply that Domain Authority has much more to do with what it takes to get you onto the front page than it has to do with ranking in the top few results once you’re there.

Another potential difference is in the types of keyword in the two samples. Moz’s study has a fairly even breakdown of keywords between the 0–10k, 10k–20k, 20k–50k, and 50k+ search volume buckets:

On the other hand, my keywords were more skewed towards the low end:

However, this doesn’t seem to be the cause of my lower correlation numbers. Take a look at the correlations for rankings for high volume keywords (10k+) only in my dataset:

Although the matchup between the two metrics gets a lot closer here, the overall correlations are still nowhere near as high as Moz’s, leading me to attribute that difference more to their use of 50 ranking positions than to the keywords themselves.

It’s worth noting that my sample size of high volume queries is only 980.

Regression analysis

Another way of looking at the relationship between two variables is to ask how much of the variation in one is explained by the other. For example, the average rank of a page in our sample is 5.5. If we have a specific page that ranks at position 7, and a model that predicts it will rank at 6, we have explained 33% of its variation from the average rank (for that particular page).

Using the data above, I constructed a number of models to predict the rankings of pages in my sample, then charted the proportion of variance explained by those models below (you can read more about this metric, normally called the R-squared, here).

Log(Branded Search Volume) - Taking the log of the branded search volume for a fairer comparison with domain authority, where, for example, a DA 40 site is much more than twice as well linked to as a DA 20 site.

Ranked Branded Search Volume - How this site’s branded search volume compares to that of other sites ranking for the same keyword, as discussed above

Firstly, it’s worth noting that despite the very low R-squareds, all of the variables listed above were highly statistically significant — in the worst case scenario, within a one ten-millionth of a percent of being 100% significant. (In the best case scenario being a vigintillionth of a vigintillionth of a vigintillionth of a nonillionth of a percent away.)

However, the really interesting thing here is that including ranked Domain Authority and ranked branded search volume in the same model explains barely any more variation than just ranked branded search volume on its own.

To be clear: Nearly all of the variation in rankings that we can explain with reference to Domain Authority we could just as well explain with reference to branded search volume. On the other hand, the reverse is not true.

Nice data. Why should I care?

If you care about your Domain Authority because it’s correlated with rankings, then you should care at least as much about your branded search volume.

The correlation between links and rankings might sometimes be a bit of a red-herring — it could be that links are themselves merely correlated with some third factor which better explains rankings.

There are also a bunch of softer takeaways to be had here, particularly around how weak (if highly statistically significant) both sets of correlations were. This places even more emphasis on relevancy and intent, which presumably make up the rest of the picture.

If you’re trying to produce content to build links, or if you find yourself reading a post or watching a presentation around this or any other link building techniques in the near future, there are some interesting questions here to add to those posed by Tomas Vaitulevicius back in November. In particular, if you’re producing content to gain links and brand awareness, it might not be very good at either, so you need to figure out what’s right for you and how to measure it.

I’m not saying in any of this that “links are dead,” or anything of the sort — more that we ought to be a bit more critical about how, why, and when they’re important. In particular, I think that they might be of increasingly little importance on the first page of results for competitive terms, but I’d be interested in your thoughts in the comments below.

I’d also love to see others conduct similar analysis. As with any research, cross-checking and replication studies are an important step in the process.

Either way, I’ll be writing more around this topic in the near future, so watch this space!

Nice study Tom, this is great to keep in mind and helps make sure every business is conducting itself professionally as to generate more referrals and more brand search traffic. (I am curious if this is another benefit and high ranking advantage to local businesses who name themselves after popular search terms, ie: Orlando Plumber, San Diego Real Estate LLC, etc.)

To answer your questions, I believe the future of backlinks is definitely going to be quality over quantity, even more so than it is today. For local businesses I believe consistent NAP listings and reviews/ratings authority will continue to grow as a factor for local SEO, maybe even taking into account State business name registry info/tax collector info.

1. If you assume the future of search is in voice, and similar devices, links will no longer feature as part of search at some point. That would mean that Google should be taking steps to make links less and less valuable in favour of more relevant metrics.

John Mu recently said comments are a good indicator of the health of a site, it's always a risky game to try and guess what is going on behind the scenes from comments like that but I think that was a fairly clear indicator of interaction over other metrics.

It would be great to apply this to smaller, more targeted data sets too - the insurance industry, for example, to see if we can say that higher brand search volume implies higher authority for relevant non-brand terms.

It stands to reason that Walmart, for example, have both high brand search volume and high visibility for non-brand queries. People may even use their brand as a proxy for a non-brand query, knowing that they will offer the product they want.

Where this could be just as insightful is within those smaller sub-sets to see if we can infer (to any level of reliability) that Google is assuming authority on the part of a brand based on how frequently they are searched, and therefore giving them some level of preference in non-brand results.

I have observed the reverse of this quite often, where specialists with negligible brand search volume will outrank large multi-nationals for significant non-brand queries. In these examples, relevance seems to trump authority.

Not sure if it's something you plan on looking at, but I think seeing similar analysis by vertical would be very interesting!

I noticed something similar happening with one of our (new) competitors. This company entered our space in the last few years but they started promoting their product in last one year very aggressively. In AdWords' Keyword Planner, the number of branded searches are 2-3 times higher than other big companies' in the market.

This new product is hosted on a subdomain. The root domain has high DA but no relevance to the subdomain. There are a few pages on the subdomain but no great content or great inbound links.

In the last 3-4 months they started to outrank all the big websites in the market that have high DAs, content relevance, market trust, etc.

I suspect that Google realised people are interested in this new product and maybe even scrolled to pages 2 and 3 to find it when searching for non-branded keywords, and probably they had good CTR in spite of bad rankings, so the algorithm decided to push them to the first page.

High branded searche interest and good organic CTR deserve high ranking positions.

I don't think that links really matter in this day in age. I have been doing lots of experiments with websites and found out that on page is a massive factor. Something you need to remember is Google provides information, its a search engine. if your website is not providing Googles users the right information then you are not going to rank.

If links are being sent to the company then the relevance of the website that is linking to company needs to be on the same topic. This lets Google understand that you are on about the correct topic and that you should rank for the correct keywords.

Are you the exact match brand (e.g. Chicago Insurance) or one of their competitors?

In either case it's going to be important to be memorable and recognisable to your customers, but I actually think that the non-exact-match brand has an advantage - they're scalable and flexible, both in their business and their branding, in a way that Chicago Insurance can't be.

I don't think the actual tactics will change much compared to any other incumbent vs. entrant SEO situation, though.

I can attest to this. Our brand is the name of a state. While we get a bit of an advantage in some situations, there is a scalability issue as we try to expand where we offer our service. Most people when asked think we only fly to Alaska.

Hi Tom, thanks for your anwer. I am the manager of a Real Estate agency in Alicante, in the south east of Spain. While having a previous name it was hard to be in the first positions, I changed the brand name from a previous one to Alicante Real Estate, Inmobiliaria Alicante

Best business decision I've never taken. 1.9 million people is enough for my business (a real estate agency). It will be impossible to make business in a new region or country, but the scalability in my own region and business area can be so big that I can not even imagine it. And we are both memorable and recognisable just after 6 months developing the new brand.

Something simmilar to Chicago Insurance (I am not related with it) but wih the name of my city (330.000 population) and region (2 million). I guess it can work perfectly for services or local brands, but it may be a problem for online projects.

Hi Tom, interesting study although I'm not entirely convinced. "Brand" mentions must surely be a red herring - if this were key then just using the "search term" as the brand would yield excellent results and take us back 6-7 years where everyone was buying up "searchterm.com" ... every search would then be for the 'brand name' and every link+anchor would be a 'brand mention'.

We had a site recently that struggled to rise above the top 3 competitors (something it had previously done). It scored higher/better on EVERY metric and there was nothing to justify why the sites that appeared above it did so. It had age, links, content, metadata, social signals, DA/PA and much more that should have justified it a #1 position. It took considerable analysis to spot the commonality between the other sites. The competing sites had poorer metrics (in almost every area) but they ALL had a backlink profile of 100% (or very near) differing C-class servers for their backlinks. Our client's site was 53% - this made the difference. Now I'm not saying that just having 50 backlinks, each on a different C-class server will get one's site to #1, but it was an interesting (if not old) study, but it does sems to me that in order to rank above the strongest competition, your linking (aka 'brand mention') profile should be as close to 100% as possible.

Maybe we're both guilty of "causation = correlation" ... but until Google tells us once and for all I guess we'll always be there!

I think you might have gotten this the wrong way round slightly - it's not about matching your brand to something with high search volume, it's about making sure that people are looking for you. Branded search volume is just a proxy for that.

I think voice search is going to have a major impact on the future of search. That being said, I think we are going to get to a point at some point in the (near) future where links will no longer be an element of search—which is crazy to think about.

Like you said, links aren't dead by any means, but it's really eye-opening to read through your post and think about how much the future of search is changing.

Thanks for the great read—I'm looking forward to your post on the topic!

What a good article! I've to admit, I'm only 23 and started discovering SEO last year. I've been taught that page rank and links are the most important thing for positioning, and now reading this post I'm like... okay hahahahaha. It is true that lately I've been seeing in some searches that the pages that appear in the first page (there will always be some of those important: EX. Travel: tripadvisor) but there are small companies there too.

I guess their on-page seo is more important for them than linkbuilding, or maybe they're investig a lot of time in internal link-building.

BTW, what'd you think about internal link building? Is it useful for you?

This is a very good, plus interesting post. I believe, links will matter always because it is a referral stuffs by another website. Suppose, if I am selling books and there are people who referring their friends, family or anyone to me, so I'll sell more books. But yes, what kind of people referring me that also matters, if somebody is very popular and has a huge fan following, if they refer me then there is a chance i'll get more costumers.

(What i meant by people, referral & popular people ?)

-> People = Websites, Popular People = High quality Websites, Referring = Links.

So, basically the quality and also so many good quality backlinks would be always a key to get ranking, traffic, leads, etc. Not only now in 2017 but also beyond.

Thanks Tom that was a good topic. In my opinion, both Domain Authority and Branded Search Volume play a big role in Search Engine Optimization.

While Domain Authority works for website firepower, Branded search Volume works for Brand firepower - which means if the web page is optimized and has 10x10 content then it can easily get the audience attention and make them stay for a good period of time and get backlinks and social media shares in the process which improves website Domain Authority.

Google seems to associate brands and trust, almost as if the confidence in adding a visible name to a page means the page is more likely to be of higher quality. You only have to look at how they will try and force your result to include a brand name (even if you don't include it in your title tags) to see how strongly they feel about this.

Good study Tom. I was at SearchLove and saw your presentation there (one of the more interesting IMO) and this piece continues to build on that. G is going to continue to evolve the algo because links still work, and spammy links still work great unfortunately. In order to combat the spam, G will have to minimize the impact of links and take into account other factors.

In addition, businesses need to focus on brand, reputation, results, reviews and client service if they want to stay relevant and evolve with consumer purchasing behavior.

There's so much more underlying Google's algorithm that you need to control for in order to do a regression. I'm not putting much stock in the results here. The biggest clue to me there are issues with your and Moz study is how different the correlations are.

But a big part of the point here was to demonstrate that ranking factor studies that do use Domain Authority (or equivalent) but fail to control for brand-based factors are probably highly misleading.

I may myself be failing to control for a fourth factor that explains the relationships between DA, branded search volume, and rankings, and hopefully someone else will put together further research highlighting what that might be.

As for the discrepancies between myself and Moz, as I pointed out, I think that's due to the difference between taking top 50 ranking positions and top 10 - but again, I'd be delighted to be proven wrong, and my keyword list is freely available above.

Combining a handful of case studies of link windfalls preceding ranking boosts (on the back of my article covering the more plentiful examples of link windfalls not moving the needle) and the recent Google comment about their trial of completely removing links from the algo being bad for search quality, I feel that links can still have substantial effects on SEO.

One thing that might carry a lot of blame for the lack of DA correlation with rankings is the handiwork of us, SEOs, in littering the DA graph with crap links. I believe Google's treatment of link quality is light-years ahead of anything we as an industry can approximate, both in technology and data to be used in training the algo (think huge proprietary data set like link disavows). Thus Google might still be able to extract a lot of mileage out of qualified link data and let these impact the rankings even though we can no longer see the correlation in our studies.

I completely agree with all of that, but I think the picture is much more nuanced than "it's links" or "it's not links".

At the top end of keyword and vertical competitiveness, I find it hard to imagine how links could be any more than one of many indicators of which site users will expect to see. If people are expecting your site when they search for a non-branded term, it really doesn't matter how many links you have, and Google is smart enough to know this.

On the other hand, I think links are still a great signal for sites which are too small to register in other signals, and I find it hard to imagine that Google would ignore any data that's available, and links certainly are a data source that they can use and that contains useful information. The only debate is around weighting, and I doubt they truly understand that themselves.

Hi Lars, you have a reply above. To sum up, it worked very well for us (a real estate agency) bur I think it depends of your business area. Wanna be nº1 in town or a national brand? It has to be part of a very big business strategy.